Morning all. The computer is just doing weird things this morning so I am running a little bit behinds as I try to figure them out. Happy Monday. Timers at the read? Good, then let’s go.
Interesting. Not where I thought this was going, but interesting.
Monday, August 21st: Her perfume lingered in the bedsheets.
Her perfume lingered in the bed sheets. For a moment, he lay there, unwilling to disturb the scent, knowing it would fade. It faded a little more each morning. He knew he needed to wash the sheets, change the bedding, get on with his life. But as long as there was still a trace of her on the sheets, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
In all other aspects of his life he looked like he was adjusting well. He got up on time and went for his morning run as usual. He ate his meals routinely and got all of his work done on time. Surely, he was allowed one private place of grief.
He could put it off no longer and stretched. The small pocket of scent disappeared and he was left with only the sheets that he knew would need to be washed.
‘Soon,’ he told himself.
He knew that he would leave them as they were another day and hope that tomorrow a faint trace would still remain.
He also knew Cynthia was gone. That she wasn’t coming back. She left him for good this time. Awake he could tell himself it was for the best. She was always cheating on him and had threatened to leave him more than once. He loved her and always forgave her. Her love affairs were always flings. He consoled himself that what they had was the real deal.
‘Except it wasn’t,’ he reminded himself as he stood, stretched and made his way to the bathroom, his body on autopilot. It knew the things that needed to be done even if his mind dwelt elsewhere.
‘Cynthia found her true love,’ he told herself. Her true love had been married to someone else. And had three children. The woman was devastated, and he couldn’t help but feel a stab of guilt when he thought of her. He had not been enough for Cynthia. If he had, she wouldn’t have gone looking for true love elsewhere.
Rationally he knew he wasn’t to blame, but the guilt remained. His autopilot took him through his morning routine, and he pulled on his runner’s thermals. He would shower once he returned. There was no point in showering before. He stretched and headed downstairs. He checked to see that the coffee pot was ready, the automatic brew turned on. He knew that about the time he was on the home stretch the coffee would start to brew and then by the time he got out of the shower it would be ready for him. It was oddly comforting to have something so reliable and he patted it’s side affectionately before grabbing his keys and heading out of the door.
Before, he listened to the morning news as he run, letting the state of the world wash over him. Now there was too much tragedy to process, and he switched to music. Only turning on the news to hear the traffic report before he drove off to work.
Ten til Midnight 